Subitha Banu, fondly known as Bhai Amma, arrives like clockwork at 10 am at her small roadside stall in Erode, in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu, bearing two large vats of biryani. On a good day, she sells out her stock by noon and goes on to cook a spicy mutton or chicken curry for the men who frequent the wine shop next to her. At night, she returns with a stock of eggs, to whip up omelets for the evening clientele. By 8.30pm, when she has made a profit of INR 700-800, she returns home with her son, to begin anew the next day. This savvy entrepreneur would now like to double her earnings by expanding her little stall, employing more people, and increasing her offerings. But for this she will need an investment of about INR 1,00,000.
Usually, in such scenarios, rural women turn to their local self-help-group (SHG) to meet their credit needs, as loans from formal financial institutions for aspiring women entrepreneurs are not easy to come by. However, Bhai Amma may have met a ceiling, as the amount is too large for her SHG to sign off on.
Recognizing the importance of women entrepreneurs in catalyzing change and boosting growth, the government of India has, since 2018, launched a series of programs to support them. However, most policy initiatives focus on encouraging first-generation women entrepreneurs to establish their businesses or on enabling Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) - that are classified as having an annual turnover above INR 50 million - to scale up.
Ventures like Bhai Amma’s that generate annual revenues between INR 300,000 and INR 3 million fall between these two categories. This niche segment – categorized as ‘Growth-Oriented Woman’s Enterprises’ (GOWE) – has the potential to scale up and grow and create more jobs – but is missing from the mainstream classification of enterprises and remains largely understudied.